Here's Elizabeth Warren Yelling At Big Banks, In Case You Were Confused About That!

Cripes the News has been awful lately! And so Yr Editrix suggested we find some good, positive news. Especially after we pitched writing a Wonket about this Mother Jones story on how global warming may be killing the whales, even though Donald Trump knows their prince. (Reply: "Nope. FOR SURE NOT THAT.") And so, as a reminder that a gooder world is possible and apropos of nothing at all that definitely didn't set your Editrix off on Twitter, where she has been stewing and bitching most shrillfully about the 2016 election and the 2020 election and any terrible similarities thereof and thereupon and therefore and thereto, we present a collection of videos of Elizabeth Warren yelling at big banks and calling for them to be broken up and their criminal operators to go to jail. Puppies and kittens will only get you so far, after all.

Let's go back to 2013 and Warren's VERY FIRST hearing as a brand-new member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, where she asked a succession of federal bank regulators howcome their agencies weren't taking big banks to trial when they do crimes, HOWCOME? Warren kept asking when the last time was that a bank had been taken to trial for defrauding people, and the regulators proudly replied trials weren't needed, because fines and settlements were plenty.

There are district attorneys and United States attorneys out there every day squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial in order to make an example, as they put it. I'm really concerned that "too big to fail" has become "too big for trial."

Let's go back even farther, to her 2011 campaign, when Elizabeth Warren explainered how the economy really works, and how nobody ever got rich all on their own, and it's perfectly fine to expect the goddamned social contract to involve those who benefit the most paying something back, OK?

In 2015, Warren held a forum on how, for much of the 20th century, government helped the middle class grow -- and how, starting in the '80s, Republicans decided the proper role of the government was to make rich people richer:

For decades after the Great Depression, America built a middle class that was the envy of the world. Everyone shared in our economic growth. From 1935 to 1980, 90 percent of America's families -- that is, everyone except the top 10 percent -- got 70 percent of all the income growth in that 35 years. It was a formula that worked. As our country got richer, our families got richer. But starting in the 1980s, something changed [...]

Republican trickle-down policies created tax breaks and loopholes for the wealthy while leaving working families to pick up the pieces. I'll believe Republicans care about what's happening to America's middle class when they stop blocking legislation that would require billionaires to pay taxes at least at the same rate that teachers and firefighters do.

Republican trickle-down economics blocked increases in the minimum wage that would have lifted 14 million people out of poverty. I'll believe that Republicans care about what's happening to America's working families when they stop blocking minimum wage increases and agree that no one, no one in this country should work full time and still live in poverty.

Sure, fine, this isn't Warren yelling at banks. But it's Warren yelling at the people who gave them a free pass and who created the inequality we're all dealing with today, so it fits the theme, OK?

Now, here's Elizabeth Warren in 2016, yelling at Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf about his bank's incredibly fraudy fraud, where Wells Fargo created extra accounts for customers without their permission, so the bank could collect fees on those accounts nobody asked to have. Let the righteous anger wash over you and soothe your soul, and then imagine Elizabeth Warren's inaugural address and her first 100 days with a Democratic House and Senate!

Let's take a look at Elizabeth Warren giving Steve Mnuchin some hell about the big banks in 2017, shall we? Mnuchin said he just LOVES the idea of updating the Glass-Steagall Act (a bill Warren actually introduced), just as long as it wouldn't break up the big banks' investment and commercial functions -- which is kind of what Glass-Steagall is all about. As Warren pointed out, that makes no freaking sense AT ALL:

And if you think THAT was nuts, wait until Mnuchin went on to insist that the best way to "drain the swamp" is to hire more crocodiles.

We'll close with this 2013 speech on the government shutdown, and the essential difference between Democrats and the "anarchy gang" that want to see American government fail. Call her crazy, but she thinks things will not be better if only the corporations and their pet Republicans can just get away with any damn thing they want:

The anarchy gang is quick to malign government, but when was the last time anyone called for regulators to go easier on companies that put lead in children's toys? Or for food inspectors to stop checking whether the meat in our grocery stores is crawling with deadly bacteria? Or for the FDA to ignore whether morning sickness drugs will cause horrible deformities in little babies? [...]

When this government re-opens, when our markets are again safe, when our scientists can return to their research, when our small businesses can borrow, when our veterans can be respected for their service, when our flu shots resume and our Head Start programs get back to teaching our kids, we will have rejected your views once again.

Government isn't the boogeyman hiding under the bed and trying to take your freedom away, as Republicans insist -- unless maybe it's the "freedom" to pollute our air and water. Hell no, says Warren: "Government is just how we describe the things that We the People have decided to do together." And on that dangerously optimistic note, we'll return you to the ongoing batshittery for this, your OPEN THREAD.